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Attacks on the current U.S. Healthcare system often center around the cost of our healthcare and how our life expectancy lags behind. However, the obvious response to this is that Americans have far less healthier lifestyles. Take a look at this summary of a recent review of British and American health.

The study thus establishes that middle-aged Americans are much sicker than their English counterparts without being able to pinpoint why. One possibility is that ill health in America reflects obesity in the past as well as today. In 1980, 15% of Americans were already obese compared with 7% of Britons. England might, thus, simply be lagging behind America in the medical impact of prolonged obesity.

The study also has an intriguing implication: that America’s medical system may not be such a poor bargain after all. As Dr Marmot’s colleague James Banks observes, if Americans are sicker, then more should be spent on treating them.

We don’t have a lower life expectancy to parts of Europe and Japan because we have an overpriced or ineffective healthcare system. We have a lower life expectancy because we virtually invented the fast food restaurant and have comparatively unhealthy lifestyles which leads to higher rates of disease and thus higher healthcare costs. But medicine can only battle such poor health habits to a limited effect.

A more notable statistic is infant mortality (death in the first year of life). Here America is ranked just 31st despite our expenditure on healthcare. I think the above explanation is very reasonable, but here is where I become a little bit of an apologist for the American healthcare system. Once again we trail behind several European countries and Japan but there are some statistical anomalies that need to be noted. Many infant deaths occur during or immediately following the birth.

In America any sign of life including heart beat usually gets the death recorded as an infant mortality. Apparently, in notable other western countries without a breath by the child the incident is recorded as a still birth. In another discrepancy, in Switzerland any premature child shorter than 30 cm, even if born breathing, isn’t counted as an infant mortality upon death.

Former Soviet nations are even worse. Most typically still use the Soviet definition of a live birth (designed to keep infant mortality low and project a very favorable image to the west) in which any child less than 35 cm, l,000 grams, or less than 28 weeks no matter what signs of life or how long s/he persists is not considered a live birth.

Finally, America has some of the highest lengths of survival of premature babies in the world. An argument, seemingly logical but obviously unsupported here by facts (they may exist somewhere), is that America’s success with premature infants actually hurts our infant mortality rate.

For instance, imagine that America resuscitates a larger number of premature infants or provides better obstetric care for high risk pregnancies than say some eastern European countries which have a lower infant mortality than us. Once again, unsupported with specific numbers but seemingly logical. However, these children, which would’ve been still births before (and not counted in the infant mortality figures), are now born alive and yet they have a very high mortality rate over the first year.

America doesn’t have the lowest infant mortality in the world, but the numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. Citing a comparison of self reported figures is always dangerous. I feel comfortable that America’s infant mortality is comparable with other western nations. As well, healthcare costs obviously aren’t being driven up by obstetrics or neonatal care, they’re being largely driven by chronic conditions which are explained by America’s incredibly poor health due to lifestyle choices.

3 Responses to “Just How Poor Is Healthcare In America?”

Far “less healthy” lifestyles, not healthier. Again, illiterate baby doctor rambles like the idiot he is. Why so many people die through health care is because they take total idiots like you, then indoctrinate them into managed care systems that are devised to maximize profits and kill. Because you are eating from the system, (and in hock up to your chin) it will never appear this way to you, though.

You will live on the happy-killing-ignorant cloud! You will think you are a nice person. You’re not. You will think you’re healing people. You are not. Seriously, read Dr. Linda Penno’s statement to congress. Use your minimal computer skills to broaden your obviously brain-dead levels of thought capacity. Try googling Doctors Kill, and you will see that you get about 4 MILLION hits. Now, THAT would tell anybody with an IQ higher than 70 SOMETHING! But then, the best and brightest don’t really go into medicine, do they? You’re too self-centered right now, kid, but in twenty years, take a good look around! Did you really chose the best life? The best profession? The most intelligent, thoughtful, smartest companions?

Maybe you even married a nurse!!! Woo-woo!!! Hmm…were the rich folks, really, out there investing and inheriting money, writing books, or doing countless other things—in fact, anything but taking blood in dirty little rooms? Staring at little vials of piss!

Oh, well, nothing makes much sense to medical students, does it? Why are Americans unhealthy? Why do they die so often in hospitals? Why, that just makes no sense! Why, it’s just so strange!

Thank God I had genuinely alive, decent parents who wouldn’t let me get anywhere near working in contemporary health care. An industry for dogs. All that debt, relatively low wages, high overhead, and everybody knows you have no decency, morals, ethics. People hate you. Your training is around-the-clock with no sleep, to make sure you never question what managed care tells you. Dotors are robots.

So you never have a decent life with other kinds of companions, who might steer you toward reality and decency. Ah…the cult of death! Uh…duh…duh…why do people criticize Amer-ca??? Why…do folks say my job is uh…duh…duh…something that is real, real bad? Uh…duh…duh…duh…

These articles really give me great insight into the mind of the type of brilliant little doctors, who, like Miz Poo/Poe/Pou really think they have the right to pull the plug on my life. You seem like an idiot, a weak link, a total imbecile, and illiterate, too—should we pull the plug on you? I mean, why on earth would somebody writing such uninformed articles feel he/she is worth more than those sweet nice people who died in New Orleans, at the hands of lower class health care workers (like you) who—one has to conclude—just wanted to play God and kill? Do I have that right with your family? After all, I have a higher IQ and am better educated. I think not.

If you ever get out of debt, and get ten bucks, go see Michael Moore’s Sicko. From there, work toward less populist texts, perhaps. Nazi Doctors, my favorite. A must read for any med student new to his real business of managed care and all that implies!

I’ve been a RN for 26 years but started in the Navy as a corpsman in 1971.
I am worried that we often don’t know when to stop picking on our old folks, promising a fix, delivering more suffering. What if we were to accept aging, illness and death as part of the life experience. We might be able to lower health care costs and focus on prevention. I have written and recorded a CD of songs about my experience in the hospital and the tough issues patients and professionals face. Give a listen @ http://www.stevepricern.com